'09 Humana Festival examined big issues

Works proved challenging but engaging; less traditional formats were satisfying

Apr. 10, 2009

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Playwrights took the pulse of America and found a patient in need of healing.

The 33rd Humana Festival of New American Plays, presented on three stages by Actors Theatre of Louisville, explored troubling contemporary issues and found seeds of hope in Wendell Berry's beautiful poetry.

In collaboration with accomplished directors and actors, the writers created new works that examine the changing political landscape as well as the literal landscape of America, which they see threatened by industry, toxic chemicals and human disregard.

They wrote about racial hatred and the suffering of the poor, the poisoning of workers, television and film violence and the emotional damage that parents and siblings inflict on one another. While the themes were serious, the works themselves were often quite humorous.

Half of the six full-length works in this year's festival contained narrative lines; the others varied in style but all could be considered theatrical collages involving music, dialogue and visual imagery. The three works with the least traditional format were most inspiring.

As a Kentuckian, I confess a special appreciation for "Wild Blessings: A Celebration of Wendell Berry," Actors Theatre's tribute to the Henry County poet, essayist, rural-life advocate and philosopher. Yet this production is one that could be appreciated by audiences anywhere.

The acting ensemble and Dalglish play the instruments, sing and share about three dozen of Berry's poems. It is Berry's poetry with its contrariness, romance, anger and melancholy that is the soul of this Actors Theatre production and its gift to the community.

The experimental and daring "Under Construction" by Charles L. Mee, directed by Anne Bogart and performed by the Saratoga International Theatre Institute (known as SITI company), was ostensibly about the work of American artists Norman Rockwell and Jason Rhoades.

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It's actually about the playwright's own life in America from his teenage years in the 1950s to his late adult life as an art-loving playwright living in Brooklyn, N.Y.

At the 2001 Humana Festival, Mee and SITI staged "bobrauschenbergamerica"; and in 2006, they produced "Hotel Cassiopeia" about artist Joseph Cornell. With "Under Construction," Mee juxtaposes different views of America — Rockwell's orderly paintings of life in the mid-20th century with the chaotic jumble of cultural artifacts found in Rhoades' installation pieces.

Surreal and intriguing, the SITI group of six men and three women can seem ridiculously theatrical one moment and amazingly brave a second later. The combination of Mee and Bogart's company, with humans wrapped like larvae, makes for a mind-boggling experience with its own kind of visual and aural poetry.

The trauma of Hurricane Katrina provided powerful subject matter for Universes, the New York ensemble that created "Ameriville," a harmonious melding of urban poetry, jazz riffs and social commentary.

Directed by Chay Yew, the show could have been a dreary recap of history but instead serves as an energetic, emotional platform for this cohesive group. I expect "Ameriville" will find audiences at other theaters around the country, as Universes did with its previous work, "Slanguage."

Universes involves a foursome of performance artists who tell haunting stories of suffering and injustice related to the hurricane. Much of the show is told a cappella and with rhythms provided by the actor-singers. The performers' impassioned characters, from voodoo queens to tour guides, and their "never-say-die" bravado make this theatrical plea for dignity and justice a true crowd-pleaser.

Naomi Wallace's works challenge assumptions about gender and are a heady mix of personal politics and surreal elements. Wallace, who also is a poet, uses vivid language that can veer from transportive to shockingly base as the story unfolds inside a cheap motel room where poisoned bodies are a result of greed and where revenge is not sweet.

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"The Hard Weather Boating Party," the Kentucky native's sharp rebuke of environmental destruction, is set in Louisville's Rubbertown neighborhood, but it could be in any town or city where an industry uses substances that pollute the air, water and human bodies.

Wallace's play imaginatively knits together environmental issues with the physical and emotional pain of three male characters, but the play's ending is confusing and ineffective.

This is the third Humana play for Wallace, a recipient of a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship (the so-called genius grant). She also wrote "One Flea Spare" (1996) and "The Trestle at Pope Lick Creek" (1998).

The realistic family drama "Absalom" proved to be a promising playwriting debut for actress Zoe Kazan. The daughter of Hollywood screenwriters and granddaughter of Oscar-winning director Elia Kazan crafted a work that involves complicated relationships among five characters.

The dysfunctional Weber family is led by the domineering Saul, whose upcoming autobiography has his adult children picking nervously at each other. At a party to celebrate the release of the book, the sibling conflicts come to a head with the arrival of a foster son. At its worst, Kazan's play is stiff and reeks of soap-opera drama. At its best, "Absalom" has several strong characters and believable, naturalistic dialogue.

"Slasher," by Allison Moore, was a satiric comedy that proved to be funnier than it was satiric.

Moore's parody of television violence against women and the "slasher" movie genre, with its requisite naked young women and high-powered tools of destruction, is an unsuccessful mix of story and spoof. The sight of angry feminist Frances (wonderfully played by Lusia Strus) madly plotting against the chauvinists of the world was the highlight of the production.

The prestigious festival at Actors, supported by the Humana Foundation, has produced three Pulitzer Prize-winning plays and contributed more than 300 works to the American theater canon. Louisvillians and other visitors to the Humana Festival are the first to see plays that move on to New York stages and theaters around the country and world.

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In New York recently, two of last year's Humana productions — "This Beautiful City" by the Civilians and "Becky Shaw" by Gina Gionfriddo, opened to positive reviews. Lee Blessing's drama "Great Falls," which also was on last year's Humana playbill, is a finalist for the 2009 Steinberg/American Theatre Critics Awards.

Whether any of these new plays will win a Pulitzer Prize or other top awards is hard to judge. Three Humana plays have won Pulitzers: D.L. Coburn's "The Gin Game" (1976), Beth Henley's "Crimes of the Heart" (1981) and Donald Margulies' "Dinner With Friends" (2000).

The festival also included three 10-minute plays and "Brink!" a series of comic scenes by multiple authors performed by the theater's apprentice company.

This year's event required an unusually large number of props and special effects, perhaps the most of any Humana festival. As expected, the props and design crews proved Actors Theatre can deliver the goods whether it is a 16-foot apple tree for an actress to climb in "Absalom" or a replica of a 1930s Chris-Craft cabin cruiser, which unexpectedly appears in the final scene of Wallace's play.

Behind the scenes, crews changed sets with alacrity. However, at least one emergency arose: The carrot cake for "Absalom" disappeared from the props department's small refrigerator in the basement of the theater where food is stored for plays.

The cake theft required a pre-curtain dash to a bakery for another carrot cake. Properties designer Mark Walston has suspicions regarding the identity of the culprit, but at this writing the mystery remained unsolved.

"Wild Blessings: A Celebration of Wendell Berry" continues through April 26. For tickets, call (502) 584-1205 or order at www.ActorsTheatre.org. To read more about the playwrights and plays, go to www.courier-journal.com.